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What's taking them so damn long? That's the question most people who don't know the ins and outs of the television business ask when they ponder the possibility of Apple creating a TV.

That possibility seems to loom larger every day, despite a lack of any real change in Apple's own statements about what it might do--which in fine Apple style are nearly content-free and will remain so all the way up to the morning of a product launch. Nonetheless, I couldn't resist the chance to dig a little deeper into what Apple might do in television, and so I did in a just-posted story at MIT Technology Review.

One thing I realized in researching this piece was that for all the mystery surrounding what Apple might do in television, it already has a lot of pieces in place for a compelling television. It has Apple TV, of course, the little hockey puck that streams iTunes, Netflix, and other content to your television set. It has AirPlay, the nifty feature that lets you zap videos from your (newish) Mac, iPhone, or iPad straight to your TV via Apple TV. It has tablets, which are essentially a second or even primary TV set for many people, even if they can't get most live TV. Of course, it can make a screen, for pete's sake.

That's on top of an increasingly capable set of industrywide technologies: faster broadband connections, content services such as Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and Hulu, and mobile TV apps. So, put Apple's and the industry's capabilities together, and the company could have a TV set out anytime it wanted.

Still, as many others have pointed out as well, the most important piece of all remains out of reach of Apple, as well as everyone else from Google to Intel: live TV. The reason the vast majority of TV watchers haven't cut the cable cord is that they want their ESPN and their Walking Dead. They want it now, on a really cool Apple television set.

And that's just not going to happen, at least not without the cooperation of, and financial fealty to, either studios or pay TV companies or both. It sounds obvious when I say it, but you're not going to pay any less for television, the package, with an Apple TV. Apple's whole business model works because it can charge you more than other makers of similar products.

Even if Eddy Cue, Apple's senior VP of Internet software and services, manages to pull a Steve Jobs and get a deal with the TV powers that be, it's debatable what they will be able to bring to the party. They and we would like to see a new way to pay for just the shows we want and no more, and then let Apple organize them in a more appealing and useful way. But both studios and pay-TV companies--which exchange billions of dollars, sometimes inside the same holding company--have zero incentive to change the current situation. Trust me, it won't be changing anytime soon.

So, what now? We wait. Maybe not all that long, if folks like Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster finally end up being right in predicting an Apple television by the end of this year.

But I can't help but feel that the TV set itself would be an anticlimax. Sure, an Apple TV will probably have a couple of whizzy features packaged into an elegant whole that at least appears to take TV to a higher realm of existence. I just think Apple has something bigger in mind: redefining television itself:

Don’t just think of an Apple TV as the big screen in the living room, or else you might miss where Apple really envisions the 75-year-old medium going next: everywhere.